Ask HN: How to create a service similar to Patreon?

Related: How to create Stripe or Paypal? Again, from the finance and I guess soft-skill perspective. Do I need to negotiate with particular banks, countries, etc...?

Exactly what streamlabs does is a thing I thought I might make some day -- now I can wipe it off my list since it seems like they are already producing a fantastic product.

I really think that the streaming world could benefit from a decentralized streaming application but this seems like something streamlabs could easily pursue in a pivot or as a new feature so I think it could happen some day.

Thanks for sharing how you feel using the service as well (being a bit more careful) -- I'm sure it will help OP a bunch

I was pondering doing a stellar based platform for this a few weeks ago. It wouldn't be that hard to do technically but there are many legal and practical hurdles.

Using something like stellar would sidestep some of the financial headaches around trying to do this through the existing financial system at the cost of being less user friendly. IMHO particularly recurring payments would be a big headache (like monthly donations). On the flipside, any fiat interactions, and the associated tax consequences would be offloaded to exchanges and users.

One cool thing that you could do with stellar is use so-called federated accounts to represent content owners and users. This simply means you have a database with accounts that you map incoming payments (from stellar) to based on a memo that is attached to the transaction. So, this allows us to have lots of accounts represented by a single stellar wallet. More importantly, it allows most of the users/owners to sidestep the issue of wallet and key management until they have to care. And finally it allows us to do micro payments. Imagine distributing 5$ worth of XLM or whatever token on stellar across hundreds of content owners based on likes or preferences of the user.

Another thing you could do is represent content owners preemptively (i.e. before they've even heard of you) with their own little federated wallet. The way that could work is that users reward whatever they think is worth rewarding and those rewards go to a dedicated account for the content owner. When owners register, they claim their rewards by proving ownership, doing KYC, and whatever else we need them to. Unclaimed rewards simply get redistributed periodically to selected good causes related to open content (e.g. wikimedia).

Building this technically is not that hard. But the organizational challenges around this are big. You need legal staffing and IMHO this only makes sense when run as a foundation and not as a VC funded walled garden/money grab for investors & shareholders. The foundation itself could run off donations via its own platform plus maybe some kind of base fee of e.g. 2-3%. When restricted to R&D and operational cost, it should not need a lot of resources and IMHO incentives for profit contradict the overall goal of the site which is to allow users to reward content producers.

I’ve worked in the fintech space for 6 years this month. I’ve been a ceo/founder, vp of product, and managing partner. there’s no way to shortcut this, you’re going to need a chief compliance officer and to adhere to the right financial regulations, likely money transmission but possibly others as well. you need to contact a lawyer and get started BEFORE you process your first payment.

i will warn you, starting down this path can be lucrative in extreme cases, but in all situations will lead to massive frustration, headache, and stress coupled with minimum 5 year reporting and record keeping requirements.

this is a hard life for a solo entrepreneur and i do not recommend it wothout having raised a minimum of $2-5 million usd and 5-10 years of experience in regulated industries. this is not the industry where you get to move fast and break things. if you want more information or help hashing things out, you’re welcome to reach out directly. i think my email is in my profile or its my username.